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Cities ‘very close’ to V&M land deal
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Youngstown finance director David Bozanich
The $970 million expansion project could get a big boost next week.
YOUNGSTOWN — More than a month after Youngstown and Girard officials came to a tentative agreement, the cities are expected to finally approve a deal next week on a land issue that would help pave the way for V&M Star Steel’s potential $970 million expansion project.
The two sides are still working out “one or two” undisclosed details, but “we are very, very close,” said Girard Councilman Joseph Shelby, D-at large. “They’re not deal-breakers. The distance between the two sides isn’t great.”
Shelby said he anticipates Girard City Council will vote on the deal at its meeting Monday.
The two sides have agreed that Girard will give up 191 acres of land to Youngstown, said Youngstown Finance Director David Bozanich and Thomas Humphries, the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber’s president and chief executive officer. The chamber helped facilitate meetings between the two cities.
The agreement would call for the two cities to split a 2.75 percent corporate-profit tax from V&M and a 2.75 percent income-tax collection on employees at the potential expansion site.
Also, the deal gives Girard 55 percent of the income tax generated by construction workers who would build the proposed facility. The estimated revenue from that income tax is $5.5 million.
Youngstown has agreed to give $400,000 to Girard — the amount it would cost to install sewer lines to the V&M location.
“We’re pretty close to a final agreement,” Bozanich said. “Youngstown views the remaining issues as workable.”
Youngstown’s board of control is expected to approve the contract sometime next week, said Bozanich, a member of the three-person board that also includes Mayor Jay Williams and Law Director Iris Torres Guglucello.
Also, county commissioners in Mahoning and Trumbull have to approve the agreement. Commissioners have said they support the deal.
V&M Star won’t decide on moving ahead with a $970 million expansion near its Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard facility until December or January. V&M officials have repeatedly declined to discuss the proposed project, which would employ about 400 new workers.
Girard and Youngstown officials have said that V&M Star officials had made it clear they wanted all of the land needed for a potential expansion in Youngstown, and that a deal between the two cities needed to get done very soon.
“We expect to have a fair and timely agreement in place as requested and directed by the company shortly,” Bozanich said.
After much bickering, primarily over complaints from Girard Mayor James Melfi about the amount of land his city would lose, the two sides reached a tentative agreement last month. That came after closed-door meetings with V&M Star officials as well as U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, and chamber representatives.
skolnick@vindy.com